When moving 40 minutes away leaves you in the same country — but a totally different nation

You might not be reading The Fix right now if it weren't for Paul Stekler.

Stekler, who makes and produces political documentaries, is one of the big reasons I got into political journalism. During the 1994 election, he made a series for PBS called "Vote for Me" -- a series of looks inside the real world of candidates and campaigns. It was -- and is -- stunning. (I have the DVDs and, yes, I still watch them. My favorite is the one about a dulcimer- playing Democrat named Maggie Lauterer who ran and lost against then Rep. Charles Taylor in North Carolina. You can watch that one here.)

So when Stekler and his cohorts Louis Alvarez and Andrew Kolker approached me a few months back about the possibility of running a series of nine "Postcards from the Great Divide" -- mini-documentaries from across the country telling stories of our politics and our culture -- I immediately said yes.

We'll release one "Postcard" each day this week, taking a look at the ways Americans who are citizens of the same country increasingly inhabit different nations. The first --" The Big Sort" -- tells the story of Aaron Spading, a man raised as an evangelical in a small town 40 minutes north of Minneapolis. He left the church in his late teens and moved to Minneapolis, where he turned into a "left of left" (his description) liberal.